I wonder if you have ever come across the name of Lake Suigetsu (with the literal meaning of “Water Moon Lake”), which is one of the scenic Mikata Five Lakes located in Fukui Prefecture (west-central Honshu), close to the coast of the Wakasa Bay in the Sea of Japan. The striped clay layers taken from the bottom of the lake are called “varves”, each annual layer of which is a mere 0.7 millimetres thick alternating light and dark coloured annual stripe with sediments of dead forms of plankton, yellow sand, etc., thus comprising an exquisite striped pattern. The entire varves are piled up 45 metres in height for seventy thousand years, which hold the world record in this field. The varves not only teach us about prehistoric climate changes and natural catastrophes but also allow a chronology of fossils and rudiments to be established, in which one utilizes the radiocarbon dating calibration. The varves in Lake Suigetsu are internationally recognized as “a global standard measure” for age determination, drastically improving the precision of age determination compared to conventional measuring methods and contributing to studies of archaeology, geology, etc. (Based on the information given by Fukui Prefectural Varve Museum)

The primaeval humankind came into being in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago. Homo sapiens dispersed from Africa about fifty thousand years ago and spent many a year emigrating to various parts of the world. The Japanese archipelago was later formed and inhabited by the Jōmon people with the lifestyle of hunting and gathering. Along the coast of the Wakasa Bay in the Sea of Japan, those Jōmon people settled about twelve thousand years ago, when a warm current from the south began to flow into the Sea of Japan, thus allowing deciduous trees to grow in the wild in the Japanese archipelago with the coming of “Japan’s four seasons”. Such a notion as “Japan the beautiful” has thus far been conveyed to posterity and has nurtured our uniquely Japanese culture.

Presently after the threshold of the twenty-first century, a mysterious virus, whether contrived or not, is circulating around the world, attacking humankind. Many people will get killed. History repeats itself and humans commit acts of folly.

Lake Suigetsu, surrounded by mountains, was already there long before the birth of humankind. It lies calm as if to sleep continuously. Not only the course of humankind but also the history of the planet Earth, the movements of the Galaxy and the formation of the universe — who knows exactly?

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